Letter

House bill was one-sided

I found myself scratching my head over a recent Ledger-Transcript letter to the editor telling us that passage of HCR2 in the NH House was “bipartisan.” Both the letter and Viewpoints Op-ed on the topic excoriate the NH Senate for not giving the resolution first priority. Your writers seem to think we House members passed HCR2 while sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya, holding hands in solidarity against the “evil corporations.”

This is not what I remember.

I do remember several failed motions to table and/or postpone a long contentious debate that turned into a political grandstanding circus, wasting time and energy we might have spent solving real problems. But I am getting older and maybe missed something, so let’s look at the votes and do the math. Republicans make up 45 percent of the 400 member House. We would expect a bipartisan bill to pass with a wide majority and that Republicans comprise about 45 percent of supporters. HCR2 passed with only 189 Yea votes, including only 10 Republicans, about 5 percent.

The truth is that HCR2 was a carefully crafted bill, sponsored by four Democrats (no Republicans), to protest the Citizens United decision and to vilify Big Business. The resolution decries corporate political contributions while completely ignoring the equally corrupting influence of Big Labor. HCR2 was not a bipartisan resolution.

So, does the lop-sided vote on HCR2 mean only 5 percent of Republicans oppose Citizens United? No. Many conservatives I talk with do not think corporations are citizens, but they agree that as long as labor unions can fund political campaigns with forced union dues, business owners should also be allowed to contribute. It seems liberals protesting corporate citizenship actually believe Labor Unions are citizens, but lack the candor to say so. That would be a losing argument.

The NH Senate has important work to do and rightly ignored this one-sided, politically motivated resolution that would accomplish nothing.